Iran vows to follow nuclear path despite sanctions

By Zahra Hosseinian

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian leaders vowed on Wednesday to press on with Tehran's disputed nuclear work regardless of any new U.N. sanctions, one day after world powers agreed the outline of a new resolution.

"The Iranian nation has chosen its path and will continue with it," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the student news agency ISNA.

"Such illegal behaviour (by Western powers) ... will not divert the Iranian nation from its path."

The United States and other Western powers fear Iran's nuclear activities are aimed at building nuclear weapons. Iran, the world's fourth-largest crude oil exporter, says its nuclear programme is intended to generate electricity.

World powers agreed on Tuesday on the outline of a third sanctions resolution against Iran, but diplomats said the draft did not contain the punitive economic measures Washington had been pushing for.

The West has faced a diplomatic showdown with Iran since 2002 and the U.N. Security Council has already imposed two sets of sanctions, in December 2006 and March 2007.

Washington has spearheaded a drive for new sanctions and had been pushing for a new resolution to impose a ban on business with leading Iranian state banks.

But that drive appears to have failed. Russia and China, both commercial partners of Iran, have hardened their opposition to tough sanctions since a U.S. intelligence report last month said Iran had halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003.